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The next champion of the sort of quasi-independence that Chihuahua both actually enjoyed, on a de facto basis, and longed for more of, in their continuing sense of distance and estrangement from Mexico City, was the celebrated Indian fighter Luis Terrazas. This man, as governor of the state, contrived to muster the resources of the government that were supposed to go to Mexico into the service of the state militias. This allowed the settler communities to prosper, but it also allowed Terrazas to prosper. Whereas other hacienda owners were forced to abandon their lands and sell them off cheaply, Terrazas, having the state militias at his command, was able to simply buy out those who were too weak to defend themselves, and his own holdings multiplied dramatically as a result. At the same time, the communities that were able to defend themselves were also able to take advantage of the increased grazing land available to them by the same abandonment of this land by hacienda owners.
The importance of the militarized settlements of the period can hardly be over emphasized, nor their plight or their isolation from the central government. Nor can their resentment of the central government be underestimated. Based on the earlier, Spanish plan of the presidios, a new decree was drawn up in 1852 which called for renewed settlement by "Mexican Nationals" (a relatively new concept) who were to be a "warrior people" and who were to resist the encroachment of "barbarous hordes" (assumedly this was an all inclusive term for both wild Indians and gringos). Land was granted to these settlers and their autonomy was also insured. At the same time, they became the suzerains of the previous settlers and of Indians and Mexicanized Indians who were their neighbors now.
In Ojinaga, there was an ebb and flow of fortunes for the settlers, as they were actually driven out of the region at one point by the Apaches, and then reconquered the region again, and drove the Apaches- Jumanos out. The Apaches-Jumanos later came back and surrendered to the Mexicans, seeking their protection from the Comanches, who would have likely exterminated them otherwise. This groups was settled in a new "rancho" that was deeded to them, in a spot known as Tierras Nuevas.
By 1878, the settlers had pretty much reached the point where in they almost universally recognized that they were really a separate political entity from the rest of Mexico, because they were forced to defend their distant and semiautonomous region and communities from the Indians with no help or contributions from the national government. This feeling, although expressed openly in letters from settler spokesmen to the government in Mexico, did not result in any kind of an largescale independence movement, but it is something that is clear to historians with access to the documents of the period, and local violent revolts would soon erupt.
Historical events took a dramatic turn in the 1880's, with the defeat of the twin Apache threats, first the group led by Victorio, defeated by a group of Tarahumara Indian soldiers under the command of Terrazas west of Ojinaga in 1880, and later with the surrender of Geronimo to the American general Nelson Miles in Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, just north of the Mexican border in 1886. Now, the rich and powerful in Mexico City and in Chihuahua no longer had any need for the fighting skills of the Chihuahua "vaqueritos", the soldier-settlers of the states various regional towns. What they were now interested in doing was the same thing that was being done in other parts of the country - taking their land a way and forcing them into virtual slavery on the haciendas. |
